Understanding ICPs and Buyer Personas In The Age Of AI: A Guide for Ad Agencies

Byline: Crafting campaigns that deliver measurable impact.

As marketing grows ever more complicated, getting internal and external teams on the same page, moving in the same direction, toward the same goal is more critical than ever. In this brief guide, we’ll walk you through simples ways ad agencies can use target audience profiles to attract, engage and convert the right customers.

The Difference Between ICPs and Buyer Personas

For ad agencies, Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) and buyer personas are indispensable tools for campaign planning. While they are often used together, they serve distinct roles in targeting and messaging.

• ICPs (Ideal Customer Profiles): ICPs are a b2b tool used to identify your most valuable customers—those who are the most profitable, easiest to convert, or align with specific internal priorities. They emphasize organizational, occupational and industry-specific details, making them especially useful for targeted inbound and outbound, and use in Account-based Marketing (ABM) strategies.

• Buyer Personas: These are typically used in b2c and represent the types of people you’re marketing to, giving a deeper understanding of their motivations, challenges, and decision-making behaviors. Buyer personas include personal traits and are tailored to help craft highly relatable content and messaging.

For ad agencies, using both ICPs and buyer personas ensures that b2b and/or b2c campaigns resonate on both an organizational and individual level, optimizing every dollar spent.*

(You can find individual worksheets here.)

1. The Role of ICPs & Buyer Personas for Ad Agencies

Advertising agencies thrive on creating powerful campaigns that resonate with specific target audiences. By leveraging ICPs (Ideal Customer Profiles) for B2B or buyer personas for B2C, you can:

• Develop pinpoint audience strategies: Focus on the types of accounts or consumers most likely to convert and deliver strong ROI for clients.

• Tailor creative concepts: Build ads around the unique pain points, desires, and lifestyle attributes relevant to each segment.

• Refine media planning: Choose channels—television, digital, social, print—based on the platforms your high-priority audiences actually use and trust.

Example Use Case:

An agency references ICPs for mid-sized healthcare organizations when proposing a LinkedIn ad campaign. By stressing cost-saving and compliance benefits, the ads speak directly to the decision-makers responsible for selecting new technology solutions.

2. Leveraging ICPs & Buyer Personas for Targeted Advertising Campaigns

ICPs and buyer personas help ad agencies determine who to target, where to run campaigns, and how to shape creative assets for maximum impact. By documenting the right audience attributes, your agency can optimize its efforts. Relevant details often include:

• Demographics and roles: Whether it’s financial controllers, Gen Z influencers, or busy parents, understanding these groups guides both creative tone and channel selection.

• Motivations and pain points: Pinpoint what truly influences each audience to act, from budget constraints to emotional triggers like convenience or status.

• Preferred content and formats: Whether it’s short-form videos, sponsored social posts, or long-form articles, choose the materials that best capture each audience’s attention.

Example Use Case:

A buyer persona for an eco-conscious millennial helps the agency craft ad copy and visuals that highlight sustainability and ethical sourcing. The resulting digital ads, displayed on Instagram, lead to higher engagement and brand trust.

3. How ICPs and Buyer Personas Help Ad Agencies

Whether you’re creating campaigns built on ICPs (for targeted B2B outreach) or buyer personas (for consumer-focused marketing), these profiles provide a strategic edge:

1. Focused campaign development: Concentrate your creative ideation on segments that align with client goals, driving more impactful storytelling.

2. Optimized budgeting and resource allocation: Allocate spend across the channels most likely to yield results, increasing your campaigns’ efficiency.

3. Stronger, more measurable outcomes: Tailor messaging to the audience’s immediate needs or aspirations, boosting conversions and client satisfaction.

4. Use with GPTs (and other generative AI): Upload ICPs or buyer personas into platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, Jasper, HubSpot, CMO Copilot, Microsoft Copilot, Mistral AI, Deepseek, Adobe Studio, etc., to generate creative concepts, ad copy, and media plans tailored to each audience segment.

5. Copy Check: Provide ICPs/buyer personas and ad mockups to a GPT for a “fit” analysis, confirming that your creative and messaging are on-target for your intended audience.

4. Building ICPs and Buyer Personas for Advertising Success

To fully unlock the power of ICPs and buyer personas, follow these steps:

1. Analyze your existing customer base. Identify common attributes among your most profitable or strategic accounts (for ICPs) and/or common consumer patterns (for buyer personas).

2. Use a segmentation framework. Group customers by use cases, jobs-to-be-done, life stages, lifestyle choices, buying triggers, company types, occupations, etc.

3. Create detailed profiles. For each cluster or segment, outline traits, tendencies, motivations, and pain points.

Once these profiles are in place, you can:

• Identify relevant features and benefits: Pinpoint which product attributes will resonate most strongly with each target audience.

• Highlight key messaging themes: Align messaging with the specific pain points and aspirations you’ve discovered.

• Tailor the tone and voice: Reflect the preferences and motivations of each segment in your copy, visuals, and outreach.

5. Key Benefits for Ad Agencies

• Targeted campaigns: Ensure ads reach the right companies and individuals.

• Creative precision: Align ad messaging with audience motivations.

• Improved ROI: Allocate resources effectively for maximum impact.

Conclusion:

For ad agencies, ICPs and buyer personas are more than tools—they’re the foundation for high-performing campaigns. By using ICPs to guide account-level targeting and buyer personas to refine creative concepts, agencies can deliver campaigns that truly connect, driving results for their clients and standing out in a competitive market.

Start integrating ICPs and buyer personas into your advertising strategies today to create campaigns that deliver measurable impact!

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